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The Watering Hole: Wednesday, June 20, 2012: Does it really Matter?

Ok, so for the next few months, if you’re in a “swing” State, you’ll be inundated with SuperPAC commercials designed to get you to vote against your own best interests. We will also be systematically bombarded with messages from the Mainstream Media designed to influence our thinking.

IT’S ALL A SHOW. IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER.

If the Powers That Be really want Obama out, all they have to do is raise gas prices to about $5.00/gallon. Instead, gas prices are going down, heading into the summer vacation season. That’s not to say they won’t go up between now and the election – but they are an accurate predictor of where our economy will head. So, pay attention to the pump, not the talking heads.

BnF, wouldn’t it have been shorter to list the topics this entry wasn’t posted in?

Well, I’ve watched parts of two nights of Joy Behar subbing for Eliot Spitzer now. I doubt if I’ll watch the show in the fall. Last night, she had Janeane Garofalo and Craig Crawford on to start, followed by author Thomas Frank. OK, so far, but then the second half of the show was total Larry King, the undead. Rielle Hunter has a reality show, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Woody Allen, one of the Baldwins, and some self-help guy. Didn’t work for Larry, isn’t working for Piers, and Joy’s grating voice doesn’t help either. She’s kind of halfway between Nancy Grace and Judge Judy now. Maybe it’s too late for the tea and honey treatment.

Speaking of voices, Rachel Maddow said she had laryngitis last week. She took the week off, and is back sounding fine. I have to give Cenk Uygur credit though, he worked through a week where he sounded terrible, but he hung in there. Rachel might have, too, if it were closer to the election. News kind of slowed down after the Wisconsin recall election, so I thought she was just getting in a week of PTO before the campaigns hit the stretch run.

If the propaganda commercials are on their way then it is time to throw out the TV. We stopped TV service over one year ago and we don’t miss it. The best part is we won’t have to see the political commercials.

My landline is the source for my Internet connection so I can’t get rid of it. We do use caller ID so we can filter the calls. Another idea is to turn off the ringer and not answer the phone. We can check it periodically for messages.

I finally stopped answering my dad’s phone. He gets so many robo calls from his various rightwing nutjobs that I just said, “fuck it.” Anyone I might want to talk to has my cell number, or they can leave a message and I’ll call them. I can’t imagine how many calls he’ll be getting once the election really gets going.

I’m so freakin’ sick of/from politics-Amurkan-style that I’ve almost reached the point of running from it rather than paying any attention. It’s the constant lying, more than anything else. I honestly never in my nearly seventy years figured I’d live to see the day when survival of the US as a constitutional entity — no matter how flawed — was in doubt, but we’ve reached that day. Sickening is the only word. Scary? I suppose to some, yes. I’m too old to worry about my fate, although I do feel desperately sorry for my kids and for all the other rational young folk that will wind up paying the price, the full cost of national stupidity, aka Conservativism, Wingnutism, Republicanism, etc.

Grrrr.

Thank all gods for what remains of mother nature, however. Wherever man ain’t, that’s where I find the meaning of LIFE!! Grand five mile walk beginning just before dawn this morning, lots of appropriate mingling with bugs, birds, and flowers. Weather’s decent; next up my morning lake circuit where I can mingle with the Canada honkers!

I think that’s what the worst want us to do. Not pay attention. Not vote. Think there is nothing we can do about our fate. Only optimists will work to make things better. I think that’s what the trolls at Think Progress were there to do. Convince us that Dems are just as bad so we’d get frustrated and stay home. My husband believes that all sides are just as bad and it drives me crazy.

I’m not staying home, that’s for sure. I can’t say I’ll vote ‘for’ every Dem on the ticket, but for sure I’ll vote AGAINST every Republican, period, end of story. Meanwhile, I stew in my anger at how bloody corrupt what was once at least a somewhat honorable system has become. But why should I be surprised, I guess, that a system based on accumulation of money and power has become corrupt. What other option is there when shit like that is the sole goal?

Ok, so I hear the ‘raise gas prices’ story again, but I really don’t think that dog hunts. Speculation in one direction can certainly inflate the price, but not to point that it can distort up to $5 gallons.

“Retail gasoline prices shot from $2.68 a gallon before Katrina hit three weeks ago to a peak nationwide average of $3.06 Sept. 5, a few days after Katrina knocked out most petroleum and natural gas operations in the Gulf.”

1/3 of the nation’s refining capacity and 3/4 of the Gulf’s producing capacity went down and the price swing nationwide was about 40c and was gone in a few months.

In short, it would take a major, major event, not simply the wish of the Illuminati to raise prices to $5, sorry – they can’t do it, the price of gasoline is not world-wide fungible but is close enough.

Romney recently suggested that a good guide to his policy on Israel would be to “just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite.” Adam Chandler makes a list of what this would entail. A few highlights:

• Take the military option against Iran off the table.
• Proclaim boldly and often that an Iranian nuclear weapon is acceptable and sponsor a policy of containment.
• Dismantle the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and Israel.
• Vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

More like two pigs in coolers. The meat is cold, the farmer is not. I also managed to slam my recently replaced knee in the truck door, now I can’t feel my foot. If some rightie picked now to call me a lazy liberal I’d likely shoot them.

- Only ten percent of Africans can read or write, because Christian mission schools have been shut down by communists.
– “the [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross… In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians.”
– “God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ.”
– It “cannot be shown scientifically that that man-made pollutants will one day drastically reduce the depth of the atmosphere’s ozone layer.”
– “God has provided certain ‘checks and balances’ in creation to prevent many of the global upsets that have been predicted by environmentalists.”
– the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda.
– “Unions have always been plagued by socialists and anarchists who use laborers to destroy the free-enterprise system that hardworking Americans have created.”
– Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential win was due to an imaginary economic crisis created by the media.
– “The greatest struggle of all time, the Battle of Armageddon, will occur in the Middle East when Christ returns to set up his kingdom on earth.”

Gail Collins examined the impact of Texas on the writing of high school textbooks in the United States:

‘Ever since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been a target for the religious right, which worried that schoolchildren were being indoctrinated in godless secularism, and political conservatives who felt that their kids were being given way too much propaganda about the positive aspects of the federal government. Mel Gabler, an oil company clerk, and his wife, Norma, who began their textbook crusade at their kitchen table, were the leaders of the first wave. They brought their supporters to State Board of Education meetings, unrolling their “scroll of shame,” which listed objections they had to the content of the current reading material. At times, the scroll was fifty-four feet long. Products of the Texas school system have the Gablers to thank for the fact that at one point the New Deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in American history.”

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

“True science will never contradict the Bible because God created both the universe and Scripture…If a scientific theory contradicts the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded.”
Ergo, Tiktaalik never existed. QED

“We seek cities because there are a greater range of girls at the bar, of reproductive choice. Number one. Number two is there are better outcomes for health and wealth. And now we care more about the environment, and cities are better for the environment. But above all, talented people seek cities for fame. They can’t get famous in the fucking village,” – Boris Johnson, mayor of London.

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — Residents evacuated their homes and animals escaped from pens at a zoo as floods fed by a steady torrential downpour struck northeastern Minnesota, inundating the city of Duluth, officials said Wednesday.Police officers helped track down a polar bear that got out of its enclosure overnight at the low-lying Lake Superior Zoo where several animals drowned.Duluth Mayor Don Ness said he would declare a state of emergency after the deluge of up to 9 inches of rain that he said caused extensive damage to the port city of about 86,000. Ness said the order would start the process to obtain federal aid. Gov. Mark Dayton said he would travel to Duluth on Thursday to discuss how the state can help.

It’s a mess up there. Here’s a link to a photo gallery of some of the damage. Lots of washed out roads.

More photos of the flooding in NE Minnesota. Last week was SE Minnesota (which is getting dumped on again this evening). I’ve read a stat (or maybe heard on the radio – and I can’t verify it at the moment) that the occurrence of extreme rainfalls is up. But we all know climate change is a hoax.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality
Open your eyes, Look up to the skies and see,
I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I’m easy come, easy go, Little high, little lowAny way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me

I will cheerfully pay my $2700.00 if the benefit goes to those whose incomes are under $60K. At least in my area, I can’t see how a family can live on less.
I am not willing to subsidize anyone who can afford a dancing horse.

“Now, I know there’s a lot of people that are very skeptical as to whether he was born in Hawaii,” Bennett told the crowd. “Personally I believe that he was. I actually believe he was fibbing about being born in Kenya when he was trying to get into college and doing things like writing a book and on and on and on.”

This from the man who harangued the state of Hawaii for the President’s birth certificate.

If they can’t get the Black man out of the White House truthfully —
do the effen GOoPer way: lie, lie, lie and then make up the facts.
Hold the Dems to a much different standards than their own Repugnant party.

“Especially in light of the refusal to release the JFK assassination files…”

There is a perfectly good reason the files haven’t been released yet. There are still a few key personnel involved in the assassination still alive and manipulating. Not to mention that if one of the biggest tinfoil hat conspiracies were to be shown to actually be true it would be that much harder to keep the rubes down on the farm.

They knew enough to keep Bush out of town until after the attack, didn’t they? He cowered in Crawford when he couldn’t be elsewhere. PNAC had said it would take a ‘Pearl Harbor’ type event, to get the people to allow them to invade Iraq.

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett says he believes Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, but thinks he claimed to be born in Kenya so he could get into college cheaper and has now spent millions covering it up.

I felt the same way. I still question the misuse of a scare resource for a man of his age. I admit I began to soften when I realized that this poor man had been living without a heart for nearly 70 years.

I won’t either. I don’t know what happened and just want it heard in a fair and open court of law. But how in the hell did ol’ George become a hero to anyone? Do the righties support him because Jesse and Al call for justice? Do they support him because we question his motivation? Do they support him because he killed a black child? How is it possible that anyone on the planet can do other than question why this death occurred and wonder what we need to do to prevent another?

Been on jury duty all week, yet, so far, I have not been assigned to a trial. That is just fine with me. For years I’ve ducked this particular civic duty, so decided to put myself out there as a participant in the lab of judicial democracy.

I intellectually agree with you, but my whole life has been dedicated to removing, or resisting a strong inclination in my personality to be judgemental. I know, I know it’s not actually the same thing, but I still want to resist. So my term ends on Friday, and if ‘m not called in, Yeeees.

I get that, but if you look at it as deciding if the plaintiff or defendant have proved/defended their case appropriately, it might be a little easier.

The jury I was on was for a personal injury case that should have been settled out of court. All the plaintiff succeeded in doing is pissing off the jury, and we only awarded the exact amount for medical. Since I was the jury foreman, I made an enemy for life out of the plaintiff’s attorney, since he didn’t get his attorney’s fees. Whatever, right? :lol:

If he, the attorney, couldn’t close the sale, tough shit. As a retail salesman for over 30 years, I lost income 30% of the time by not being able to make the sale. Yet that 70% provided a decent income, and I improved my clients overall health. That’s how I could sleep at night. Oh, listening to Ed Schultz on my car radio today, which I don’t do very often, he was plugging a web site business called, madeinamericaforever.com that hosts small business’s websites to reach a larger audience, and I thought of you. Check it out and see if it is compatible with your vision.

Yep, but this attorney is a major league Catholic dooshbag/woman hater, on the same level of Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. Or a source of grief.

I’ve looked into that made in America site, which is awesome, and I need to check it out again. They require that all materials be made in America as well, and since most (if not all) of the textile mills have moved overseas, it’s been hard to find fabric made in this country. In fact, the only fabric I’ve been able to find that’s still made in this country is the toile — which is totally French-looking. :D